WASHINGTON, D.C., February 6, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) – While concerned citizens protest that the Obama administration’s birth control mandate infringes on the First Amendment, Planned Parenthood is thanking Obama for his decision to force religious institutions to cover contraception, including abortifacient drugs like ella, in their health care plans by August 2013.

The nation’s leading provider of abortion has produced a new TV ad, entitled “Basic Health Care,” stating, “President Obama and Secretary Sebelius stood strong to make sure all women, no matter where they work, will have access to birth control without a co-pay, saving them hundreds of dollars.”

The advertisement asks viewers, “Thank President Obama Secretary Sebelius. Tell them to keep protecting the birth control women count on.”

The ad will air in eight markets: Albuquerque, New Mexico; Toledo, Ohio; West Palm Beach, Florida; Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Reno, Nevada; Charlottesville, Virginia; Lansing, Michigan; and Madison, Wisconsin. All are located in swing states pivotal to the 2012 presidential election.

Pro-life leaders are outraged by the commercial and the mandate it celebrates. “Even most Catholic and other religious colleges are not exempt from the mandate,” Patrick Reilly of the Cardinal Newman Society wrote in a statement e-mailed to LifeSiteNews.com.

“This is a windfall for Planned Parenthood and its deadly agenda,” he wrote.

So far at least 165 Catholic bishops have spoken out in opposition to the mandate, and have rallied the faithful to opposition through statements and letters read from the pulpit at Sunday Mass. Numerous leaders of other faiths have also spoken out, including 65 Orthodox bishops, and leaders in the Evangelical and Jewish communities.

Stop Planned Parenthood (STOPP) calculated that Planned Parenthood made a $64 million annual profit from contraceptive sales before the mandate.

“The birth control pill, containing estrogen and progestin, is on the World Health Organization International Agency for Research on Cancer website…listed among group one carcinogens,” Malec told LifeSiteNews.com. “That is the highest level for a cancer-causing agent that can be assigned to a particular drug.”

The advertisement states that the birth control pill prevents ovarian cancer “and the pain and infertility of endometriosis.” But Malec said while the birth control pill reduces the chances of contracting those two kinds of cancer, it increases the odds of developing three separate strains of cancer.

“Essentially, they are taking a carcinogen to prevent cancer,” she said.

The National Cancer Institute at the National Institute of Health reports on its website, “The risk of endometrial and ovarian cancers is reduced with the use of OCs [oral contraceptives], while the risk of breast and cervical cancers is increased.” It adds, “the risk was highest for women who used OCs within 5 years prior to diagnosis, particularly” among women aged 20-34.

“There are more than twice as many American women that die of the cancers that the pill causes than the cancers it prevents,” Malec told LifeSiteNews.

Reilly noted that the use of oral contraceptives is tied to other harmful activities. “I don’t think it’s coincidence that Secretary Sebelius, when she first announced the HHS mandate last year, said it was urgent that college students have access to free contraception,” he wrote to LifeSiteNews. “No-cost contraception leads to premarital sex and more, not fewer, abortions.”

A 2010 study conducted in Spain found that from 1997-2007 women’s use of contraception increased nearly 30 percent, while their abortion rate more than doubled over the same period.